Sunlit Path in Summer

Ash Prakash, “Independent Spirit: Early Canadian Women Artists”, Richmond Hill, 2008, pages 279-81

A member of the Beaver Hall Group of painters, Mabel May maintained a strong relationship with her fellow women painters following the short association, the artist also maintaining “close relationships with A.Y. Jackson, Edwin Holgate, Lilias Torrance Newton, and Clarence Gagnon.” Frequently painting “outdoors, directly from nature”, Prakash reveals that “a shift in the language of her work took place in the 1920s when she began to use design and colour to convey her empathy with the circumstances of her sitters.” A 1950 “Montreal Star” article described Mabel May's development as a painter: “In her earlier works, following the French Impressionists, she luxuriated in the play of dazzling light, treating her landscapes and figures with grace and tenderness but stopping short of the sentimental. Later she became more austere as her design developed in strength through solider forms.”